1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to the visualization, perception, representation and computation of data relating to the attributes or conditions constituting the health state of a dynamic system. More specifically, this invention relates to the display and computation of data, in which variables constituting attributes and conditions of a dynamic system can be interrelated and visually correlated in time as three-dimensional objects.
2. Description of the Related Art
A variety of methods and systems for the visualization of data have been proposed. Traditionally, these methods and systems fail to present in a real-time multi-dimensional format that is directed to facilitating a user's analysis of multiple variables and the relationships between such multiple variables. Prior methods typically do not process and display data in real-time, rather they use databases or spatial organizations of historical data. Generally, they also simply plot existing information in two or three dimensions, but without using three-dimensional geometric objects to show the interrelations between data. Often previous systems and methods are limited to pie charts, lines or bars to represent the data. Also, many previous systems are limited to particular applications or types of data. The flexibility and adaptability of the user interface and control is typically very limited, and may not provide flexible coordinate systems and historical-trend monitors. Other systems, which have a flexible user interface, generally require substantial user expertise in order to collect and evaluate the data, including the pre-identification of data ranges and resolution. Another common limitation of previous systems and methods is that they provide only a single or predetermined viewpoint from which to observe the data. Typically, prior systems and methods do not provide data normalcy frameworks to aid in the interpretation of the data. Furthermore, most prior methods use “icons,” shapes, lines, bars, or graphs. For general background material, the reader is directed to U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,752,893, 4,772,882, 4,813,013, 4,814,755, 4,823,283, 4,915,757, 5,021,976, 5,121,469, 5,262,944, 5,317,321, 5,491,779, 5,588,104, 5,592,195, 5,596,694, 5,751,931, 5,768,552, 5,774,878, 5,796,398, 5,812,134, 5,830,150, 5,923,330, each of which is hereby incorporated by reference in its entirety for the material disclosed therein.
As this disclosure employs a number of terms, which may be new to the reader, the reader is directed to the applicants' definitions section, which is provided at the beginning of the detailed description section.